Baritone Festival

New York is lucky to have two of the world’s most gifted baritones—Simon Keelyside and Gerald Finley—in town simultaneously. Keenlyside is giving a tremendous performance in Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet” at the Met (see video from Barcelona above). Finley, meanwhile, is preparing to sing a recital at Zankel Hall tomorrow night, with the world première of Peter Lieberson’s “Songs of Love and Sorrow” to follow at the Boston Symphony next week. I wrote a Critic’s Notebook about Finley last week; Anne Midgette has a rave review of his current recital program in the Washington Post.

I should mention also that Finley has a new CD of opera arias—Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, and John Adams (“Batter My Heart,” from “Doctor Atomic”)—on the Chandos label. The catch is that Finley sings everything in English; the disk is part of Chandos’s Opera in English series. Some may flinch at the translations—“Verachtet mir die Meister nicht,” from “Meistersinger,” becomes “Do not disdain our Masters thus”—but the selections show the full range and richness of Finley’s voice. As a Musical Criticism interview reveals, he is eager to branch out into Verdi and Wagner, and will sing the mighty role of Hans Sachs at Glyndebourne next year.

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